North by Northwest Scene 25 Summary

  • Thornhill creeps up to Vandamm's house. He looks in a window and sees Eve and Vandamm talking.
  • Vandamm's reassuring Eve and asking her to forgive him for not having trusted her more. His suspicions have been put to rest following the shooting, which he takes to prove Eve's loyalty.
  • Vandamm relieved that there's been nothing published in the papers linking any of them to the shooting.
  • Leonard asks to have a word with Vandamm in private and Eve leaves the room to go pack.
  • Leonard explains to the Professor that he shouldn't trust Eve. He thinks the shooting solution was too neat to be believable, and suspects Eve of finding a way to ensure that she'd leave the country with Vandamm when the time came.
  • Leonard says that Vandamm himself must have had an inkling that Eve's guilty, since he didn't tell her where the secrets were hidden: in microfilm stuffed into a small pre-Columbian statuette bought at the previous day's auction.
  • Leonard has the gun that Eve used to shoot Thornhill/Kaplan and fires it at Vandamm, revealing that the gun only shot blanks.
  • Eve is startled by the gunshot, not knowing it was a blank.
  • Vandamm says it was "a car backfiring," and sends Eve away to finish packing.
  • After she leaves, Vandamm tells Leonard that he plans to throw Eve from the plane.
  • Thornhill has been watching all of this from outside the house and decides he has to warn Eve.
  • But he can't get her attention outside her bedroom. He decides to break into the bedroom, looking down on the living room, where she's now sitting.
  • He writes a note on a box of matches with his monogram: "They're on to you. Come up to your room!"
  • He tosses the matchbook downstairs and Eve eventually sees it. She suddenly claims she's left her earrings upstairs so she'll have a reason to go back up.
  • Thornhill explains that Vandamm and Leonard know about her and says they plan kill her. He tells her not to get on the plane.
  • Eve walks out of the house with Vandamm and Leonard. It sure doesn't look like she has much choice at this point.
  • The housekeeper sees Thornhill's reflection in a television and pulls out a gun, telling him to stay put. It's looking more and more like curtains for Agent One.